Anya De Leon

An African American/Puerto Rican award-winning spoken word artist, DeLeón is an activist and teacher born in 1967.

If Women Ran Hip Hop (adapted and excerpted)

If women ran hip hop the beats and rhymes would be just as dope, but there would never be a bad vibe when you walked in the place and the clubs would be beautiful and smell good and the music would never be too loud but there would be free earplugs available anyway and venues would have skylights and phat patios and shows would run all day not just late at night cuz if women ran hip hop we would have nothing to be ashamed of and there would be an African marketplace with big shrines to Oya Yoruba deity of the female warrior and entrepreneur and women would sell and barter and prosper

If women ran hip hop there would never be shootings cuz there would be onsite conflict mediators to help work through all that negativity and hostility and there would also be counselors to help you make decisions about safe sex or no sex, do I really want to have sex with him or her? and there would be safe, reliable, low cost 24 hour transportation home and every venue would have on-site quality child care where kids could sleep while grown folk danced and all shows would be all ages cause the economy of hip hop wouldn't revolve around the sale of alcohol

If women ran hip hop everybody would respect everybody without gender bias and females would dress sexy if we wanted to celebrate our bodies but it wouldn't be that important because everyone would be paying attention to our minds, anyway

If women ran hip hop men would be relieved because it’s so draining to keep up that front of toughness and power and control 24-7

….If women ran hip hop there would be social workers available to refer gangsta rappers to 21-day detox programs where they could get clean and sober from violence and misogyny

but best of all if women ran hip-hop we would have the dopest female emcees ever because all the young women afraid to bust would unleash their brilliance on the world